Ep. 132: Stop Playing It Safe: Ghostwriting, Poker & Bold Moves with Amanda Botfeld

In this episode, Ruby Powers sits down with Amanda Botfeld — published author, founder of Finally Get Your Book Done, and author of A Girl's Guide to Poker — for a conversation about two things that have more in common than most people realize: writing your book and playing to win.

Amanda has bylines in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Los Angeles Times. She submitted to the WSJ op-ed desk over and over for a year before they ran her piece. She played the World Series of Poker main event with her father and they both cashed. She teaches poker to executive women at Goldman Sachs. And she built a ghostwriting company that helps people who have a story to tell finally get it on paper — in their own voice, live, sentence by sentence.

What we explore:

✅ Why People Write Books: The permanence and crystallization of what you know, what you've been through, and what you keep repeating to everyone around you. Why a book is different from every other format — and why now might be your moment.

✅ The Finally Get Your Book Done Model: Collaborative ghostwriting done live on Zoom, where you're in the driver's seat for every sentence. Why it's faster than traditional ghostwriting, more authentic than handing off your story, and more demanding than people expect — in a good way.

✅ What Holds Most Manuscripts Back: Hands down, it's not being willing to be vulnerable. The people who hold back, gloss over things, and play it safe on the page end up with books that don't land. The ones who go there — that's what draws readers in.

✅ Poker as a Business Framework: Aggression frequency, playing the hand you have, why playing it safe is statistically a losing strategy, and what happens when you stop waiting for perfect cards and start making moves.

✅ Women in Poker, Women in Business: Why something changes between age 14 and 40 that makes women more risk-averse at the table — and how the same pattern shows up in boardrooms, pitch meetings, and business bank accounts. What it takes to lean into your strengths and stop being afraid of making a mistake.

✅ What Great Writing Actually Is: It's not about saying something new. It's about saying something people already believe in a way that is shockingly, refreshingly, and inspiringly clear. Pace, cadence, and sticking the landing.

If you've been thinking about writing a book, or you've been playing it safe in your business — this episode is your permission slip to stop waiting.

📣 SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:

🚀 Law F